Spiritual intelligence in the dental students of Tehran Universities 2013-2014

Spiritual intelligence refers to the individual ability in interacting with universe and metacognitive. The present aimed at determining the level of spiritual intelligence of dental students in Tehran universities. This was a cross sectional-descriptive study. A total of 481 dental students of different universities in Tehran, Iran were randomly enrolled in the study. Date were collected using spiritual intelligence questionnaire of Abdullah Zadeh including demographic data such as: gender, age, semester, GPA, economic situation, residential, and marital status. Then data was analyzed using SPSS and inferential statistics such as independent t-test and ANOVA. Spiritual intelligence in dental students of Tehran universities was moderately high; however, no statistically significant difference was found between male and female students. A significant relationship was found between spiritual intelligence and age, study courses, GPA, and economic status (P<0.05). However, no significant difference was found between spiritual intelligence and other variables including gender, marital status, and residence. Spiritual intelligence of the students increased with the increase of age, GPA, economic status, and years in the university. Intermediate level students need more attention in order to improve their spiritual intelligence. However, deeper analysis of spiritual intelligence and better understanding of associated factors revealed the need to conduct further studies that show correlation between other factors such as public health and welfare with spiritual intelligence.